No, we’re not planning on becoming regular podcasters, but we were drinking, decided to continue to drink, then found ourselves strangely attracted to my Olympus digital voice recorder. It just happened. Our podcasting etiquette sucks, we talk over each other, and we can’t stay on topic to save our lives, but essentially we figured “Why the hell not?” Honestly, though, we had so much fun we’re doing it again tonight. While drinking. A lot.
Marking the 20th anniversary of the series, Contra 4 is coming to a mobile device near you this fall – and you can be a part of it! Konami Mobile is holding a Contra 4 character design contest, which calls on fans to design a new character that “demonstrates the true meaning of the classic Contra game,” which if I recall correctly is either ‘Aliens suck’ or ‘The scatter shot supersedes friendship’. Submit a winning entry between now and October 1 and you have a chance at getting your character in the game, along with a game credit and a Contra 20th Anniversary designer’s award, with the top 20 designs getting a credit and a t-shirt. You’ll have to beat me, of course. I’m thinking camo pants, a tank top, a headband and combat boots. I can’t lose! More »
After an appointment in a nearby hotel, I came back into convention centre and after seeing a door that said “re-entry only”, slipped inside. As I got down to the bottom of the stairs I noticed things that looked a little different. This certainly wasn’t the show floor I had left a half an hour before. Upon looking around I realised I had been dumped off into the merchandise room and as I am rather fond of that sort of thing I figured I’d stick around and take some pictures. I mainly stuck to the CAPCOM and Square booths, both of which were filled to the brim with things to make my bank account shrink. Check out the gallery below for a bountiful bevy of action figures, statuettes, jewellery and T-shirts. I think I’m going to become the official Kotaku merchandise photographer after this trip. now if I can only figure our how to get them to let me expense my toy purchases… More »
PGR4 is a lot like PGR2. As in, you won’t notice the difference from the predecessor at first glance, but spend some time with it and the little things, the things that make all the difference when you have to do them a million billion times, add up. Nothing feels new, but everything feels tweaked. Graphics are also looking a little tarted up, though sadly the course I was thrown onto was blessed with a lovely summer’s day, so no, I didn’t get to see the new weather effects. More »
Wandering the already teeming halls of Tokyo Game Show Thursday I stumbled upon what can only be described by abusing the English language: A broom video game controller that you actually ride to play.
The demo was in Japanese, as was the pamphlet, but it looked as if you played by sitting on a small bicycle seat, dangling your legs down on either side of the broomstick mounted beneath it. The player apparently leans forward to get a hold of the controller and a better view of the screen. According to the pamphlet for Online Mega’s Parse Rorunpe you can also tilt the seat forward and backwards 10 degrees. I’m not sure if this is for controlling the game or just so you can pretend you’re riding a pony instead of the most awesomest controller ever. Oh and they’re are witches, though I’m pretty sure the game doesn’t feature any touching. Don’t tell Ash.
galleryPost('broomcontroller', 4); More »
Grasshopper Manufacture’s No More Heroes may not have Halo 3 or Grand Theft Auto IV hype behind it, but we’re certainly looking forward to Goichi Suda’s next. Fortunately, for us English speakers, IGN reveals that the game finally has a Western publisher who’s brave enough to take on the Wii follow up to Killer 7. Ubisoft have stepped up to the plate to bring No More Heroes stateside. The even better news? Travis Touchdown and his cel-shaded mates will be coming to the West in February of 2008.
Killer.
I know, Metal Gear was important, so I did that first, but there was one game on this showroom floor I wanted to play above all others. Pro Evolution Soccer 2008. Or, you know, Winning Eleven 2008. Either or. Anyway, hey, current-gen Pro Evo, nice to see you. Was expecting you last year, but late’s better than never. Especially when you’re this fantastic.
The current iteration is what last year’s should have been. Player animation and models have been greatly improved, tackles and contact are now much more realistic and the whole thing’s a lot more polished, with stuff like new incidental animation and a new front-end.
Course, for anyone who doesn’t regularly follow this, none of that will matter. It’ll look like Pro Evo. But for fans, especially fans disappointed with last year’s 360 effort, I’d advise you to prepare for good times. More »
Guanqiao was showing off their line of prettifying console stickers on the show floor. The stickers come in either pre-designed packs for any of the current consoles or portable, or you can design your own art. I wasn’t super impressed with the DS Lite stickers, but the Wii, Xbox 360 and PS3 stuff looked kinda zupear koole. More »
In a sentence, if you like the Time Crisis series, you will like Time Crisis 4, since it doesn’t deviate wildly from the tried-and-true. This is a bit disappointing in the graphics department, considering it marks the series’ PS3 debut—they’re nicer, for sure, but not wholly updated. The biggest (and best) change comes from the GunCon 3 in its dual-fisted goodness, which felt quite natural and quite nice, actually, and improved our gun-waving endurance. Closeup of the GC 3 post-jump. More »
newVideoPlayer("DualShock3_gawker.flv", 475, 376); I wonder if Kaz called EA and was like, “What the fuck, guys? I mean, what the fuck?” More »
